The Frick Fine Arts Library ~ Early History

Miss Frick as Fine Arts Department Benefactor

Miss Frick was also a big supporter of education, especially arts education (Lockard 1997, 10). She supported many of the same institutions that her father did, including the University of Pittsburgh, and made a name for herself in the University's history by making large gifts and helping found its Fine Arts Department and Fine Arts Library (Lockard 1997, 10). Miss Frick was close friends with Chancellor John Bowman, and it was through their relationship and joint efforts that the Fine Arts Department at Pitt was established (Lockard 1997, 10-11). Their efforts were part of the academic beginnings of art history in the 1920's , a discipline that finally became recognized as such during that decade. Art also became recognized as a discipline around that time, with Pitt being one of the first to give it formal recognition (Lockard 1997, 11).  

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Miss Frick continued to be a benefactor of the Fine Arts Department until the early 1960's (Lockard 1997, 11). Up to that point she had helped found and establish the department, she had donated the Henry Clay Frick Fine Arts Building, built for the amount of $3.5 million and that was for the department, the library, and the University Art Gallery, and had given the department a yearly $135,000 grant to pay for faculty and staff salaries (Lockard 1997, 11-12). 
 

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